Bush daughter backs gay marriage

The 29-year-old daughter of President George W. Bush announces in a web video posted late Monday that she supports same-sex marriage. “I’m Barbara Bush and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality,” she says. “New York is about fairness and equality. And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love.”

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The video is a 22-second spot for gay-rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign’s New Yorkers for Marriage Equality project. The group plans to show the video on Saturday at its annual gala in New York.

“Join us,” she says at the end, adding herself to a growing list of prominent New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have appeared in brief videos supporting HRC’s efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in New York.

A graduate of Yale University, which has a history of being among the most gay-friendly members of the Ivy League, Bush lives in Greenwich Village. She has spent time working with AIDS patients in Africa and is president of a public health nonprofit. Before founding the group, she spent two years working at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.

Bush has also been involved in recent months with the American Foundation for Equal Rights, an advocacy group that is sponsoring the federal legal challenge to Proposition 8. She was at a New York fundraiser for the group in October, and was an event co-chair for a Jan. 19 benefit concert in Beverly Hills where Elton John was the headliner.

Bush’s mother, former first lady Laura Bush, has also said she supports gay marriage. In an interview last year, Bush described acceptance of same-sex marriage as “a generational thing” that “will come.”

“I think that we ought to definitely look at it and debate it,” Laura Bush said last May on CNN. “I think there are a lot of people who have trouble coming to terms because they see marriage as traditionally between a man and a woman, but I also know when couples are committed to each other and love each other, they ought to have I think the same sort of rights that everyone has.”

Meghan McCain, daughter of former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has also been vocal about her support for same-sex marriage. Her mother Cindy McCain appeared last year in an advertising campaign against California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state. Meanwhile, the senator is still opposed to same-sex marriage.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has for years said he supports marriage equality, swayed to that position by his openly gay daughter Mary. “Freedom means freedom for everyone,” he said during the 2004 presidential campaign.

And former Republican National Committee chairman and Bush campaign head Ken Mehlman, a one-time foe of gay marriage, announced last summer that he is gay. In December, he said he hopes the GOP is able to “look in the mirror” and support gay marriage.